Technical communications should contribute to a company's bottom line: they should cut costs and build sales.

User guides, help systems, tutorials, installation guides, and quick start guides should be an integral part of products and services: the knowledge required to set up and use those products and services. Technical overviews and white papers play an important role, too. They should provide the knowledge necessary to understand how technologies, products, and services work, how they deliver business value, and why they are compelling investments. Technical communications have great potential to make companies more profitable.

To cut costs and build sales, we must do more than develop a user guide, help system, or tutorial with the latest desktop publishing tool, help authoring tool, or content management system. These tools help cut the costs of developing and maintaining technical communications, but they do not cut other costs associated with product development, marketing, sales, installation, training, and support. They do not build sales, either.

To cut costs and build sales, we must understand the need for the technical communication; we must measure how well we meet that need; and we must make sure that the technical communication adds more value than it costs to produce. In other words, we must assess needs, establish metrics, and make a business case to show that our technical communications will improve profitability.

Before we examine those topics, though, letís look in greater detail at how technical communications can cut costs and build sales.